Cities are open systems whose free-flow of people and ideas continually rejuvenates them, whereas corporations are closed systems that peak and die. So argues an InformationWeek article comparing the lifespans of cities to those of corporations, and citing SFI studies of systems that decrease or increase in efficiency with scale.
The piece posits that companies formed under set rules of play (be it goals, processes, tools, or products) will falter when confronted with disruptive innovation, whereas cities can self-organize around novelty and change, and considers the challenge of creating a sufficiently open corporation that could transform the mortal life trajectory of a typical business into a superlinear alternative.
Read the article (December 28, 2011)
Watch the video about SFI's cities research (7 minutes)